The underlying problem of the anti-choice movement is that all their arguments go back to the fundamental belief that what strangers do with their own bodies is somehow their business. No matter how hard they try to deny it, this underlying assumption is easy enough to see across a variety of issues.

As part of the struggle to prevent women from using the health-care benefits they earn, six state attorneys general—who clearly need something better to do with their time—launched a suit to give employers the right to deny employees coverage of birth control as part of their health policies. Now, those attorneys general are giving up the lawsuit, for now at least, in no small part because a federal judge earlier ruled they have no standing to sue. What other people do with their own insurance coverage does not, it turns out, cause any actual damage to strangers, making it really hard for these conservative attorneys to argue that they have standing. Ian Millhiser at ThinkProgress explains:

“Standing” is the requirement that a plaintiff show that they have actually been injured by a law before they are allowed to sue to challenge it in federal court. No one, not even a state attorney general acting on behalf of his or her state, is allowed to bring a case to federal court simply because they do not like the law, or because they are able to offer some speculative reason why the law might somehow injure them at some point in the future.

This problem that these attorneys general were facing is a fundamental problem for the anti-choice movement generally: All their beliefs go back to the conviction that what other people, even perfect strangers, are doing in bed somehow affects them and so needs to be stopped by any means necessary. (Sadly, as family planning clinics and abortion clinics can tell you, this sometimes means that criminal and even violent behavior is often a part of the arsenal that anti-choicers use in attacking other people for having sex without their permission.) The problem with this belief is self-evident. What other people are doing with their bodies does not actually affect anti-choicers, and so their standing—not just legally, but morally—is always hard to impossible to establish. Thus, the never-ending parade of bad faith arguments and outright lies that come from anti-choicers.

With their support of abortion bans, there’s at least a mild plausibility to their claim to be concerned over fetal life, though of course it crumbles the second you start looking more deeply at the evidence, particularly when it comes to the fact that anti-choicers consistently resist every realistic policy known to reduce the abortion rate because those policies don’t actually satisfy their real desire to punish women for having sex. Beyond that, though, they lose the ability to come up with arguments that don’t nakedly expose their belief that they are the proper owners of your body.

The contraception mandate battle is a perfect example of this. Unable to come right out and say that they don’t want it to be too easy for women to have non-procreative sex, anti-choicers have instead latched onto this “religious freedom for employers” argument. Unfortunately, the argument doesn’t work without the assumption that your employer has some ownership over his employee’s private life, including her own religious beliefs. The argument rests on the assumption that because your employer has a right to control your compensation after he’s released it to you, that even though the insurance plan actually belongs to you and not your employer—because you earned it, alongside your paycheck—he has a right to dictate how you use it. It really is no different than trying to control how you spend your paycheck, but anti-choicers hope the public, confused by the heavily bureaucratic insurance system, won’t see that. But if you spend even a few moments thinking about it, it becomes clear that the objection to the contraception mandate is rooted in the belief that your employer has a right to try to impose his religious views on you in the bedroom.

Another favored tactic is to focus excessively on young women under the age of 18, exaggerating how much control parents have over the bodies of teenage girls and appointing themselves substitute parents in order to gain control. But inevitably, these kinds of arguments always end up giving them the control over adult women they quietly believe they are entitled to. Laws requiring Plan B to be put behind the pharmacy counter were justified as ways to keep teenagers from defying their parents’ supposed right to force them to ovulate, but the result was that adult women also had incredibly restricted access.

You see that attempt to use “young girls” as a battering ram to attack adult women (as well as teenage girls) in the conservative freakout over Miley Cyrus’ randy performance at the Video Music Awards. While there are legitimate criticisms about Cyrus as a cultural appropriater, the right-wing response was, unsurprisingly, all about trying to establish their right to control what grown women do with their bodies, even though it does not affect them. Invoking their supposed “right” to control the bodies of the under-18 set was a popular tactic. Rush Limbaugh blamed feminism, saying, “they’re the ones who told us, ‘Little girls are gonna have sex. You can’t stop it.’” Reminder: Cyrus is 20, not a “little girl” by any stretch of the imagination.

Of course, then there’s always the threat that someone—someone else, no doubt—will punish you with rape and violence if you don’t accede to the right wing authority to control your body. Glenn Reynolds wrote this little threat on his blog in response to Cyrus rejecting his authority to tell her when and how her ass is to be shook: “Chivalry was a system, in which obligations fell on women as well as men. If you wish for men to behave as they did in past times, you may have to live with women behaving as they did in past times, too. In the age of Miley Cyrus and Sandra Fluke, that doesn’t seem especially likely.” The implication being, of course, that men were somehow better behaved toward women back when sexual harassment was just considered “life,” when marital rape was legal, when a man could pat you on the head and tell you to get married instead when you applied for a job, and when domestic violence was so normalized that it was a regular jokeon television.

It always goes back to this tension: At the end of the day, conservatives really don’t have a good argument for why what you do with your body supposedly hurts them. Our political system, our health-care system, and now even the basic right of an employee to clock out and not have to deal with employers nosing around their bedrooms are all being threatened because conservatives refuse to learn the basic rule of minding their own business.

In announcing its final rule concerning the Affordable Care Act’s guarantee of access to birth control without a co-pay for all American women—including the Catholics and non-Catholics who work in religiously sponsored schools, hospitals, and social service agencies—the Obama administration bent over backwards to accommodate the Church’s concerns. The goal was to spare Church fathers from the anguish of getting their pristine hands dirty by, as the Bishops charged, being forced to sell, buy or broker birth control coverage for women, including students. The final rule allows that either the insurance company used by the institution will have to pay for birth control—or, if the institution is self-insured, the plan administrator will have to provide or arrange payment—with reimbursement coming through a series of convoluted steps.

In a repeat of the Church battle over the Affordable Care Act, Sister Carol Keehan, head of the Catholic Health Association, last week publicly approved the administration’s final rule, issuing an explanation for the association’s members about how to implement it. Not so the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. The week before, its head, Cardinal Timothy Dolan, released his statement expressing dissatisfaction with the compromise, saying that the bishops are subjecting it to further “analysis,” feel their “religious freedom” is still under threat, and plan to continue “defending our rights in Congress and in the courts.” Count on the 60+ lawsuits by Catholic diocese and universities around the country, joined by secular employers who also don’t like birth control and want to exclude it from their insurance policies, proceeding apace.

It is maddening that the Administration had to go to such extremes to placate the Church fathers, who dare to put “moral” and “money” as it applies to this deeply compromised institution in the same sentence. How pure, really, were the hands of the Church fathers who began decades ago to secretly spend millions of dollars in hush money to silence child victims of clergy rape and sodomy, and rid themselves of the evidence of their paternal crimes? Hush money that came from the faithful in the pews, who paid for all those ever-escalating insurance premiums, and from selling the churches and schools out from under those same working-class Catholics? The victims merited all the compensation they got and more, but the Church fathers literally stole that money from the Catholics they served and lied about it.

When the Bishops realized how much money they had to lose by even these secret settlements, hiding the goods from the victims became the next best strategy. So how pure, really, are the hands of Cardinal Dolan, the leading voice claiming the moral high ground in the battle to keep any of the church coffers from supporting birth control for women? Files just released by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Milwaukee turned up a letter showing that when Dolan served as the Archbishop of that diocese, he secretly and successfully, and even as the Archdiocese was preparing to file for bankruptcy, petitioned the Vatican to bury nearly $57 million in a cemetery trust fund in order to protect those assets “from legal claim and liability,” aka, child abuse victim compensation. And this was on top of his paying off some priest child sex abusers $20,000 a piece to leave the priesthood, reportedly defended by Dolan in one case as “an act of charity,” so that, irony of ironies, the priest “could pay for health insurance.”

And how pure, really, are the hands of the Church fathers regarding money when we look at the shenanigans at the Vatican bank? Still laughably named the “Institute for the Works of Religion,” the Vatican Bank is literally drowning in mounting accusations of money laundering and mobster connections. Most recently, Monsignor Nunzio Scarano, an accountant for the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See, which manages the Vatican’s property and investments (and a Vatican account-holder himself), was arrested and charged with conspiring to transfer some $26 million from Switzerland to Italy to dole out to his rich friends.

Given this sad financial state of affairs, how does paying for a health service like birth control for women become such a threat to Church fathers that they’ve made a major campaign out of it?

The bishops claim this mandate violates church teaching that artificial birth control is “intrinsically evil, “despite the fact that nearly 100 percent of Catholics don’t believe there is anything “intrinsically evil” about birth control and use it. The bishops claim birth control is the same as abortion; it isn’t. They claim to be protecting the institution’s “conscience,” thereby stepping all over Catholic Church teaching that defines conscience as “the most secret core and sanctuary” of a person,not an institution, and the Church not as the “men of God” but as “the people of God,” which would seem to include women. They claim the money at issue is “their” money, even though employees earn their health insurance as part of their compensation package, and many have to contribute to or pay the full amount of their health insurance premiums so this is at base a labor issue. And their claim that birth control is not a “health” service, in the face of current scientific knowledge and medical opinion, is tantamount to insisting that the sun revolves around the earth.

A hint of a far deeper motivator lies in a rarely regarded passage from Humanae Vitae, Pope Paul VI’s 1969 Encyclical letter, “On the Regulation of Birth,” which cemented the Church’s current intransigent opposition to birth control. The section on “Grave Consequences on Methods of Artificial Contraception” reads in part:

Not much experience is needed to be fully aware of human weakness and to understand that human beings—and especially the young, who are so exposed to temptation—need incentives to keep the moral law, and it is an evil thing to make it easy for them to break that law. Another effect that gives cause for alarm is that a man who grows accustomed to the use of contraceptive methods may forget the reverence due to a woman, and, disregarding her physical and emotional equilibrium, reduce her to being a mere instrument for the satisfaction of his own desires, no longer considering her as his partner whom he should surround with care and affection.

In other words, a woman should not have access to methods of artificial birth control, should be at the mercy of her husband and her biology, because then her husband is more likely to remain committed to her and to God and faithful to the Church’s “moral law.” Keeping her at constant risk of pregnancy—and the health jeopardy that is attendant on such risk—is a small price to pay for maintaining the Church’s moral order.

That position—blindness to women’s rights and needs—has a familiar ring. It is the same refusal to see that underlies the all-male hierarchy’s ban on women priests. It is the same refusal that forbids priests to marry. Indeed, at the heart of the contraception debate and so many debates around gender in the Catholic Church is a terror that if women have rights—over their own reproductive lives, to be priests, to marry priests, to have real voice and power in the Church—then the Church men will change. And if the Church men change, then the Church will change. And if the Church changes, the future that the all-male hierarchy lives in terror of—Pope Francis’s nightmare of rampaging feminists, waging a “vindictive battle,” steam rolling men with their “chauvinism with skirts”—will, at last, be here.

Whosoever desires constant success must change his conduct with the times. —Niccolo Machiavelli

At a gathering of Catholics in his archdiocese last year, Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan, the archbishop of New York, uttered a strategic point that would have done Machiavelli proud. The bishops, he said, are perhaps not the church’s best messengers.

“In the public square, I hate to tell you, the days of fat, balding Irish bishops are over,” he told his flock, according to the New York Times, at a diocesan convocation on public policy. Reporting for the Times, Tim Stelloh and Andy Newman wrote of an example he gave the crowd, an apparent reference to the hiring of Helen Alvaré by the National Conference of Catholic Bishops in 1990:

[Dolan] told a story about bishops hiring an “attractive, articulate, intelligent” laywoman to speak against abortion and said it was “the best thing we ever did…”

Dolan, as president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), decided this week to operationalize his assessment by hiring Kim Daniels, a former operative for Sarah Palin’s political action committee, as his spokesperson—a new position with a much broader mission than that covered by Alvaré in the 1990s.

An attorney and youthful mother of six who echoes the bishops’ disdain for contraception and abortion, Daniels is a smart cookie with an appealing personality. In other words, an “attractive, articulate, intelligent” laywoman.

When the USCCB announced Daniels’s appointment, the thing that grabbed reporters’ attention was her work in 2010 as an operative for Sarah Palin’s political action committee, SarahPAC—a résumé entry conveniently omitted from the bishops’ announcement about their new hire. If there was any doubt remaining of the bishops’ total alignment with the most right-wing part of the Republican Party, that data point should lay it to rest. But the rest of Daniels’ career is far more interesting—and troubling.

The Reframing of Religious Freedom

Over the course of the last several decades, as reasonable people, including most lay Catholics, increasingly rejected the church’s medieval worldview on women’s rights, human sexuality, and LGBTQ rights, the political power of U.S. bishops has been on the wane. During the debate over health-care reform, President Barack Obama went around the prelates in order to confer some Catholic buy-in on the deal, ultimately winning the approval of a number of highly placed nuns, who signed a letter to that effect, as well as the head of the Catholic Health Association, who also happens to be a Catholic sister.

The bishops were incensed. At that moment, their lack of sway over their own people was revealed for all to see. They needed a new angle, one that could also speak to the hearts of those ordinary Americans who, in the wake of the church’s massive child-sex-abuse scandal, now judged them to be mere mortals, and deeply flawed mortals at that. Enter the Red, White, and Blue.

The success of the Tea Party movement, with its bigoted and misogynist underpinnings dressed in the regalia of patriotism, was apparently not lost on the bishops. On the heels of their humiliating defeat with the Affordable Care Act, the bishops found a new, patriotic-sounding cause to wrap around their attempts to codify prejudice and discrimination as secular law: religious freedom, which is guaranteed by the First Amendment to the Constitution. Summon the fife and drum!

Trouble is, the bishops’ notion of religious freedom differs a bit from that of the founders, who sought to avoid the establishment of a state religion by promising Americans freedom of worship. What the bishops seek, on the other hand, is the right to impose their religious views on those who do not subscribe to their theology. Any impediment to their totalitarian view is now framed as a breach of their religious freedom. And Kim Daniels has been deeply involved in the advancement of this strategy.

Media-Friendly and Studio Ready Church Ladies

After her brief tenure with SarahPAC, Daniels, together with National Review Online columnist Kathryn Jean Lopez, created a media platform for the two women called Catholic Voices USA. The aim of the organization is to fulfill some of what Dolan had called for: the marshalling of informed Catholic laypeople who can plead the church’s case to the public. From the CVUSA mission statement:

We’re media-friendly and studio-ready, and offer an authoritative (but not official) group of articulate speakers who make the Catholic case in interviews and debates — clearly, reasonably, and compellingly.

Daniels has used that platform to speak out not only against abortion and contraception, but also the inclusion of same-sex partner rights in immigration reform—on the basis of Catholic teaching.

The bishops threw a fit upon learning that Catholic-affiliated institutions whose main function is not religious (for example, hospitals) would not be exempted, under the Affordable Care Act, from the mandatory provision of prescription contraception by employer-provided health-care plans. And Daniels stepped up to the plate, joining Helen Alvaré, now a law professor at George Mason University after leaving her post as the director of planning and information for the National Council of Catholic Bishops’ Pro-life Secretary, in launching a petition, which they say now has 37,000 signatures, claiming the administration doesn’t speak for women.

Daniels, who worked on contract for the bishops prior to her appointment by the USCCB, also participated in the Tea Partyish “Fortnight for Freedom” the bishops launched last summer in protest of the contraception mandate. (Read Religion Dispatches’ Sarah Posner’s take here.)

But Daniels’ brief tenure with SarahPAC wasn’t her only eyebrow-raising employment experience that the bishops left out of their announcement. Under her signature on the anti-contraception-mandate petition, Daniels identifies herself as “Former Counsel, Thomas More Law Center”; she left that organization in 2009, and signed the petition in 2012. That means something, because the Thomas More Law Center (TMLC) is a virulently theocratic, anti-woman, anti-gay, and Islamophobic non-profit law firm to which Daniels devoted nine years of her career.

The writer of the USCCB announcement, however, glossed over that part of Daniels’ work history, simply describing her as “an attorney whose practice has focused on religious liberty matters.”

The Thomas More Law Center

Remember that case about teaching “intelligent design” (a fancy name for creationism) in Pennsylvania? That suit was fomented by the Thomas More Law Center; its officials literally shopped around intelligent design textbooks to public school districts, hoping to find one that would be willing to take up the challenge in exchange for TMLC’s legal defense when secularists launched a lawsuit. In Dover, Pennsylvania, the school board did—and lost big in a 2005 court decision. (That debacle led former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) to resign from the advisory board of the Thomas More Law Center.)

The center also launched a 2002 lawsuit against a Planned Parenthood chapter for failing to inform abortion patients of the (non-existent) link between abortion and breast cancer. It lost that one, too, and the plaintiffs were made to pay Planned Parenthood’s legal fees.

Islamophobia and “Religious Liberty”

Lately, the Thomas More Law Center is making a name for itself in the burgeoning field of Islamophobia, having added Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) and former Rep. Allen West (R-FL) to its advisory board, where they join Alan Keyes, the former UN ambassador and anti-choice zealot who often accompanies Operation Rescue founder Randall Terry in his antics.

Last year, TMLC President Richard Thompson claimed that the education of the U.S. military has been taken over by the Muslim Brotherhood. From an October report by Brian Tashman at Right Wing Watch:

Thompson said that Sharia law is becoming part of U.S. law and that the government is unable to fight it because Americans are too sensitive to criticize Islam, and so we are now “being destroyed from within.”

On May 2, the TMLC website featured on its home page a link to a story about Lt. Col. Matthew Dooley, one of its clients, in Soldier of Fortune magazine, a publication for mercenaries. Dooley is pursuing an administrative appeal in the Army over his rejection for a command post after he was fired as an instructor at the Joint Forces Staff College in Norfolk, Virginia, for teaching a course that advocated “total war” against Islam. Dooley was canned by the Joint Chiefs of Staff after Spencer Ackerman, a reporter for Wired’s Danger Room blog, wrote:

The course instructed senior officers at the lieutenant colonel, commander, colonel and Navy captain level that “there is no such thing as ‘moderate Islam,’” and that wartime protections against civilians of Islamic countries were “no longer relevant.”

Dooley’s course materials, obtained by Ackerman, envisioned a strategy for “reducing Islam to cult status” by destroying the holy cities of Mecca and Medina.

It should be said that I found no evidence that Daniels worked for the Islam-bashing clients of the Thomas More Law Center—but neither has she tried to distance herself from the center.

The Catholic News Service described Daniels, while on the TMLC staff, as having “specialized in conscience-rights issues, testifying in opposing legislation that would place regulations on pro-life pregnancy crisis centers and bills that would force pharmacists to dispense morning-after pills.”

Before the Maryland State Senate in 2008, Daniels testified against a legislative proposal that would have mandated crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs) that don’t offer information on abortion or contraception to tell patients that the centers are exempt from providing factually accurate information. Daniels’ objection was that the legislation would violate the First Amendment by requiring CPCs to make a “false statement”—because they’re bound by their internal guidelines to always tell the truth (meaning, of course, the truth according to their biblical or magesterial interpretation). To the joy of anti-choice groups, the bill ultimately failed.

Since Daniels’s departure, the Thomas More Law Center has also been a lead player in a cottage industry of legal challenges to the Affordable Care Act, especially its contraception mandate. In its most recent contraception mandate case—its fourth, according to the website—TMLC is representing Eden Foods, the health-food company that wants to claim a religious freedom exemption from including contraception in the health insurance it provides its employees.

In choosing Daniels as his hand-picked spokesperson, Cardinal Dolan has laid bare just how radically the U.S. Catholic Church has turned to the right in the Obama years.

Four years ago, the vast majority (90 percent) of students at Boston College (BC), a Catholic university, voted in favor of having access to sexual health-care education and resources, including contraceptives, on campus. We are proud to have been among the passionate group of students who led that campaign and formed the unofficial student group Boston College Students for Sexual Health (BCSSH). But we quickly learned that the university would ignore the overwhelming call for reform.

Safe Sites is one of the programs we designed to meet students’ need for sexual health care. Boston College administrators knew it existed and let it operate under the radar for years—until this month. Now, their shocking backlash against the program is inspiring news coverage around the world.

The Boston College administration recently sent letters to Safe Sites locations threatening disciplinary action for distributing condoms. Speaking publicly this week, Boston College spokesperson Jack Dunn speculated that students who continue to provide condoms to their peers could face expulsion from the university.

Expulsion. From a major American university. In the 21st century.

As three recent grads who have all gone on to pursue careers in health education and advocacy, we strongly condemn the administration’s abrupt and cowardly interference with students’ attempts to educate their peers and provide them with the tools they need to lead healthy lives. All people deserve access to the information and resources they need to make informed decisions about their own health, including students at a Catholic university.

So since the university isn’t willing to provide sexual health information and resources to its students, who better to step up and do so than students themselves?

We are so proud of the students of BCSSH who continue to fight for health-care access on the BC campus. The BC administration’s threats against them are an embarrassment for an institution that prides itself on being a “new Ivy.” BC is in its sesquicentennial year, but still has so far to go. And making public statements threatening to expel students is a surefire way to discourage new applicants.

Have no doubt: If what is happening today had happened during our senior year of high school, we would not have chosen to attend BC. And we say this as scholarship recipients and student leaders—the kind of young people BC should and does endeavor to recruit.

Still, we often find ourselves defending our alma mater. For all its backwards policies, BC did challenge us to develop and defend strong convictions and to organize effectively in an environment hostile to our cause. But it’s time we stopped backing BC up. The administration’s actions are indefensible.

People ask why “radicals” like us would choose to attend a Catholic university in the first place. We believe college students should not have to choose between the world-class education that BC offers and having their health needs met.

Further, we chose to go to a Catholic university, not the Catholic Church. We were never warned that students who advocate for basic health-care access would be silenced and undermined at every turn. In every tour and orientation, student guides proclaim that BC is a welcoming campus for people from diverse backgrounds and perspectives.

We know now that isn’t true.

It wasn’t true when a conservative student who used the “Holy Father’s teachings” to justify his claim that condoms have no impact on curbing the spread of HIV was invited to the same sexual health policy meeting we, as BCSSH board members, attended with BC administrators; he was given the same platform and afforded the same legitimacy.

It wasn’t true when another student organization on campus was punished for collaborating with BCSSH for a World AIDS Day event.

It wasn’t true when a campus priest harassed BCSSH volunteers during a routine condom distribution off campus.

It isn’t true while the Pro-Life Club is a recognized, funded student organization and BCSSH is not.

It isn’t true when students can’t rely on the campus health center for accurate, evidence-based, judgment-free health information and treatment.

And it isn’t true now, as the administration proves once again how little it cares for the health, wellness, and autonomy of the very students it’s charged with representing and protecting.

We always used to lament that “change is glacial” at BC, but now it’s going backwards. It’s disgraceful that the administration chooses to interpret its Catholic mission so limitedly. To us, BC’s motto, “Ever to Excel,” its commitment to social justice, and its call for students to act as “men and women for others” do not entail the judgment, shaming, or repression the administration is showing to BC Students for Sexual Health.

Boston College encouraged us to follow St. Ignatius of Loyola’s creed to “set the world aflame,” to fill it with the light of our passion, intellect, and hope in order to change it for the better. Perhaps it’s time the school takes its own advice.

Eighteen for-profit companies have filed lawsuits to overturn the birth control benefit in the Affordable Care Act, which requires that all insurance policies cover birth control without a co-pay as part of preventive care. These companies argue that including insurance coverage for birth control "violates their religious freedom." Here's a brief introduction to those companies and their cases.

Eighteen for-profit companies have filed lawsuits to avoid complying with the the birth control benefit in the Affordable Care Act (ACA), which requires that all insurance policies cover birth control without a co-pay as part of preventive care. Often misleadingly characterized as mandating “free birth control,” the ACA, otherwise known as Obamacare, requires that all insurance policies cover all forms of basic preventive care without a co-pay, including well-woman, well-baby, and well-child visits, as well as other basic prevention care for men and women. This coverage is intended to save costs and promote public health.

Basic preventive reproductive and sexual health-care services, including contraception, are therefore also covered without a co-pay; as part of the mandate, all insurance plans must provide coverage without a co-pay for all methods of contraception approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Employees earn their salaries and their benefits, and many pay for all or a portion of their health-care premiums out of their salaries. As such, none of this coverage is “free,” but is rather covered by the policies they are earning or for which they are paying.

Nonetheless, the 18 companies that have sued to overturn the birth control benefit are doing so based on several misleading claims. One is that providing insurance policies that cover birth control violates the “religious freedom” of the companies’ owners. It is difficult to see how a critical public health intervention accessed through an employee’s health plan violates the religious freedom of the owner of the company. In fact, the reverse seems to be true; not allowing an employee to access coverage he or she has earned would appear to violate the employee’s freedoms, first and foremost.

The owners of these companies share the belief that a woman is pregnant as soon as there is a fertilized egg (the medical definition of pregnancy is successful implantation of an embryo in the uterine wall) and that a fertilized egg has the same rights as a born person. They also claim that the ACA forces them to cover “abortifacients,” with most pointing to emergency contraception methods such as Plan B to make their case. Emergency contraception, however, is just that: Contraception. It prevents ovulation, and therefore fertilization, and does not work after an egg has been fertilized.

These lawsuits, now in various phases of litigation, are posing a critical challenge not only to the Affordable Care Act, but ultimately to the ability of all people to make the most profoundly personal decisions about whether, when, and under what circumstances to have a child and build a family.

Below is a list of these companies and the status of their cases. And Planned Parenthood Federation of America has launched a campaign enabling you to tell these companies what you think.

1. Tyndale House

Summary: An Illinois publishing company focusing on Christian books (and Bibles). The founder’s argument is that he shouldn’t have to provide his 260 employees with contraceptives he equates with abortion.

Status: U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton of the district court granted a preliminary injunction.

Tyndale House President and Chief Executive Mark D. Taylor.

President and Chief Executive: Mark D. Taylor

Taylor sees ACA birth control mandate as a test of God’s law vs. Man’s law. “I’ve always thought—in a theoretical way—that I might someday face a situation where the government was asking or telling me to do something that was counter to God’s law as I understood it. If such a situation arose, I hoped I would have the backbone to stand tall and disobey the government mandate. Well, that day seems to have come.” (World Magazine; October 2012)

Taylor equates Plan B and intrauterine devices (IUDs) with abortions because they prevent implantation. “As a Protestant, I don’t have a moral objection to contraceptives per se. But [the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)] defines contraception to include abortifacients such as Plan B (the morning-after pill), Ella (the week-after pill), and intrauterine devices. HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius admits that one purpose of these drugs and devices is to keep the fertilized egg from “implantation” onto the wall of the uterus. In other words, their purpose is to cause an early abortion of a human being that is made in the image of God.” (World Magazine; October 2012)

Taylor feels he has biblical confirmation that his lawsuit is protecting the word of God. “The day after we filed the lawsuit, the daily reading from The One Year Bible included the first chapter of Jeremiah and these verses:

The LORD gave me this message: ‘I knew you before I formed you in your mother’s womb. Before you were born I set you apart and appointed you as my prophet to the nations’ (Jeremiah 1:4-5, NLT).

How’s that for biblical confirmation that the unborn baby is important in the eyes of God! After reading that passage, I felt confirmed in my responsibility to stand up against a government that is trampling on my religious liberty. May God be merciful to all of us.” (World Magazine; October 2012)

2. Freshway Foods and Freshway Logistics

Summary: The produce processing and packing companies are Ohio-based but serve 23 states and employ about 400 people. “The government is requiring them to enter into a contract and to pay for things that they find morally objectionable, and they just want to be able to continue what they’ve been doing,” one of their lawyers argued. They’ve excluded contraceptives, sterilization, and abortion-inducing drugs from their company health insurance for the past decade. Co-founders are two Catholic brothers.

The produce processing and packing companies are Ohio-based but serve 23 states and employ about 400 people.

Status:Complaint filed. In response to plaintiffs’ contention that their case is sufficiently related to the Tyndale case, the district court ordered plaintiffs to demonstrate as much by February 8.

Co-founder and CEO: Frank Gilardi

Co-founder and President: Phil Gilardi

“Freshway Foods trucks bear signs stating, ‘It’s not a choice, it’s a child,’ as a way to promote the owners’ anti-abortion views to the public, according to [a] legal complaint.” (Journal News; January 2013)

Freshway Foods has deliberately excluded contraceptives, sterilization, and abortion-inducing drugs from its company health coverage for 10 years. “’Our clients believe that having to pay for contraceptives, abortion-inducing drugs, and sterilization will cause them to violate their religious beliefs and moral values,’ said Edward White, Senior Counsel of the [American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ)]. ‘They have specifically excluded such things from their company’s health insurance plan for the past ten years. The HHS mandate, however, will require them to pay for such drugs and services on April 1st. They have filed this lawsuit seeking an injunction against the mandate so they can continue to run their business in accordance with their religious beliefs and moral values.’” (ACLJ; January 2013)

3. Conestoga Wood Specialties Corporation

Norman Hahn.

Summary: A Pennsylvania-based wood cabinet and specialty products manufacturer run by Mennonites who think some birth-control products such as Plan B are “sinful and immoral” and “an intrinsic evil and a sin against God.” The company employs 950 people.

Status: The court dismissed a motion for preliminary injunction, but the plaintiffs appealed to the Third Circuit last month.

The owners argue they are acting in accordance with their faith by not covering contraception, and being forced to cover it is “un-American.” “‘People of faith should not be punished for making decisions according to the deepest convictions of that faith,’ said Attorney Charles W. Proctor, III, who is representing the Hahn family. ‘When government grows so invasive to force persons to violate their conscience, government is out of control and clearly outside the bounds of our Constitutions’ Bill of Rights .… The Health and Human Services abortion pill mandate would unconstitutionally force the Hahn family, owners and operators of Conestoga Wood Specialties, to do something offensive to their conscience—under threat of onerously large fines and penalties,’ he continued. ‘This is un-American.’” (Christian News; December 2012)

They argue that Plan B is equivalent to an abortion, and call it “intrinsic evil.” “‘The Mennonite Church teaches that taking of life, which includes anything that terminates a fertilized embryo, is intrinsic evil, and a sin against God to which they are held accountable,’ said the lawsuit brought by Norman Hahn, Norman Lemar Hahn and Anthony H. Hahn. Both abortion and any abortifacient contraception that may cause an abortion are ‘equally objectionable,’ they said.” (Washington Times; December 2012)

They have said mandating that they offer contraception is “sinful and immoral.” “Conestoga Wood in December had sued the U.S. Secretaries of Labor, Health and Human Services and the Treasury, alleging it would be ‘sinful and immoral’ to make the company comply with the law by paying for or supporting certain forms of contraception.” (Lancaster Online; January 2013)

4. Hercules Industries, Inc.

Summary: A Colorado corporation that manufactures heating, ventilation, and air conditioning products and employs 303 staffers.

Founders and Owners: James Newland, Paul Newland, William Newland, and Andrew Newland

Number of children: The Newlands are five sibling-owners of Hercules Industries. The number of children they each have is unknown.

Hercules is a for-profit, secular employer, but is incorporating Catholicism into its “corporate culture.” “Although Hercules is a for-profit, secular employer, the Newlands [founders] adhere to the Catholic denomination of the Christian faith. According to the Newlands, ‘they seek to run Hercules in a manner that reflects their sincerely held religious beliefs.’ Thus, for the past year and a half the Newlands have implemented within Hercules a program designed to build their corporate culture based on Catholic principles.” (Court files; July 2012)

Hercules Industries’ previous health insurance plan intentionally left out contraceptive coverage because of the Newlands’ Catholic beliefs. “According to Plaintiffs, Hercules maintains a self-insured group plan for its employees ‘[a]s part of fulfilling their organizational mission and Catholic beliefs and commitments.’ Significantly, because the Catholic Church condemns the use of contraception, Hercules self-insured plan does not cover abortifacent drugs, contraception, or sterilization.” (Court files; July 2012)

Ironically, Hercules Industries was going to be awarded a Good Citizenship Award for a number of features, including its health-care coverage. The award was taken away when the company won its court injunction. “Hercules Industries, a heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning manufacturer that employs 300 workers and has been in business in the Mile-High City for 50 years, was to be honored with a ‘Good Citizenship Award.’ The laurel was in recognition of contributions to the community, including the historic restoration of company headquarters and, ironically, its ‘generous employee health care coverage.’” (Fox News; August 2012)

5. Hobby Lobby

Summary: A national craft supply chain based in Oklahoma City that employs over 13,000 people across the country.

David Green.

Status: The district court denied the preliminary injunction, but Hobby Lobby appealed to the Tenth Circuit, which denied separate injunctive relief but has not yet decided whether to grant the preliminary injunction. The plaintiffs appealed to the Supreme Court for the separate relief, but the Supreme Court refused to hear the case.

Founder: David Green

Green argues that his religious beliefs support his thousands of employees and their families. “’Our family is now being forced to choose … between following the laws of the land that we love or maintaining the religious beliefs that have made our business successful and supported our family and thousands of our employees and their families,’ Green said … during a conference call. ‘We simply cannot abandon our religious beliefs to comply with this mandate.'” (The Oklahoman; September 2012)

Green says the foundation of his business is “honoring the Lord in a manner consistent with biblical principles.” “‘The foundation of our business has been, and will continue to be strong values, and honoring the Lord in a manner consistent with biblical principles,’ a statement on the Hobby Lobby website reads, adding that one outgrowth of that is the store is closed on Sundays to give its employees a day of rest.” (CNN; January 2013)

6. Sioux Chief Manufacturing

Summary: A Missouri plumbing products company that employs 370 people.

Status: Complaint filed.

Joe Ismert.

CEO: Joe Ismert

The Ismert family alleges that the contraception mandate interferes with their desire to embody the moral teachings of the Catholic Church in their business. “‘The Mandate illegally and unconstitutionally coerces Plaintiffs to violate their sincerely held Catholic beliefs under threat of heavy fines and penalties,’ reads the suit in part. ‘The Mandate also forces Plaintiffs to fund government-dictated speech that is directly at odds with the religious ethics derived from their deeply held religious beliefs and the moral teachings of the Catholic Church that they strive to embody in their business.'” (Christian Post; January 2013)

The Ismerts’ lawyer has called the contraception mandate “unprecedented, unnecessary, and unconstitutional.” “‘Americans should be free to honor God and live according to their consciences wherever they are,’ said [lawyer Jonathan R.] Whitehead. ‘They have the God-given freedom to live and transact business according to their faith, and the First Amendment has always protected that. Forcing Americans to ignore their faith just to earn a living is unprecedented, unnecessary, and unconstitutional.'” (Christian Post; January 2013)

7. Domino’s Farms

Summary: The Michigan-based property management company owned by Tom Monaghan, the same man who founded Domino’s Pizza. Forty-five full-time and 44 part-time employees work there.

Monaghan’s case refers to contraception as “a grave sin” and likens Plan B to abortion. “The lawsuit, filed in federal court, claims that the new law ‘attacks and desecrates a foremost tenet of the Catholic Church,’ which considers contraception ‘a grave sin.’ It adds that the mandate compels insurance issuers to cover the morning-after pill, ‘despite their known abortifacient mechanisms of action.’” (AOL; December 2012)

Before the ACA rule, Monaghan specifically crafted an insurance plan that did not include contraceptives or sterilization. “Before Obamacare, however, Monaghan had been able to ‘engineer’ an insurance policy through Blue Cross and Blue Shield that had exemptions for contraceptives and sterilization, according to [Thomas More Law Center President and Chief Counsel Richard] Thompson.” (AOL; December 2012)

Monaghan once countered the idea that contraceptive coverage extends equal opportunity to women in the workforce by citing that his lead counsel, Erin Mersino, won their case’s first victory while more than seven months pregnant. “‘The federal government says we need this law so that women have an equal opportunity in the workforce, so they can choose if and when they have children,’ said Thompson. But Mersino managed that legal victory, he points out, while seven-and-a-half months pregnant.” (AOL; December 2012)

8. Autocam Corporation

Summary: A West-Michigan-based company that makes parts for transportation and medical equipment and employs 680 people across the United States. CEO John Kennedy and family are Catholic.

Status: The district court denied preliminary injunction. Plaintiffs appealed to the Sixth Circuit, which denied injunction and motion to reconsider.

John Kennedy.

CEO: John Kennedy

Kennedy made this video in association with CatholicVote.org to explain his opposition to the ACA mandate. In it, he likens Plan B and IUDs to abortion. “The Affordable Care Act forces me to pay for things that violate my deeply held beliefs, such as abortion-inducing drugs, and makes it difficult for us to offer these great benefits to our associates. I can’t in good conscience choose between violating my beliefs and meeting my associates’ needs,” he says in the video.

Again, Kennedy has likened Plan B and IUDs to abortion. “‘Why is the Obama administration prioritizing life- ending drugs over lifesaving drugs?’ said Kennedy, who filed the lawsuit with the support of the Catholic Vote Legal Defense Fund and the Thomas More Society of Chicago.” (MLive.com; October 2012)

9. O’Brien Industrial Holdings

Summary: A Missouri company that processes ceramic materials and employs 87 people.

Status: After the district court granted motion to dismiss, the plaintiffs appealed to the Eighth Circuit. Last November, the Eighth Circuit issued a stay pending the appeal, over the dissent of one judge.

Frank R. O’Brien.

Owner: Frank R. O’Brien

The company website says, “Our conduct is guided by the Golden Rule and the Ten Commandments. We will not discriminate based on anyone’s personal belief system.” “Mission: Our mission is to make our labor a pleasing offering to the Lord while enriching our families and society …. Integrity: Our conduct is guided by the Golden Rule and the Ten Commandments. We will not discriminate based on anyone’s personal belief system …. People: We are an organization that will attract and keep outstanding personnel. Mean spirited behavior will not be tolerated.” (O’Brien Industrial Holdings)

O’Brien’s lawyer has argued that businesses should be governed by moral values, not government. “‘We have argued from the beginning that employers like Frank O’Brien must be able to operate their business in a manner consistent with their moral values, not the values of the government,'” said attorney Francis Manion. (Associated Press; November 2012)

10. American Pulverizer Company

Summary: Owned by founders Paul and Henry Griesedieck, who have controlling interest in four Missouri-based companies involved in the business of wholesale scrap metal recycling. Their companies employ about 150 people.

Status: The district court granted a preliminary injunction in part because of the O’Brien stay precedent.

Paul and Henry Griesedieck.

Founders: Paul and Henry Griesedieck

The Griesediecks have argued that “it would be sinful for us to pay for services that have a significant risk of causing the death of embryonic lives.” “In their lawsuit, the Griesediecks contend that compliance with the Obamacare mandate would force them to violate their religious and moral beliefs. In their lawsuit, the Griesediecks state that ‘it would be sinful for us to pay for services that have a significant risk of causing the death of embryonic lives.’” (Life News; January 2013)

The Griesedieck brothers have likened Plan B to abortion. “The owners, who are Evangelical Christians, contend that the HHS mandate requiring coverage for abortion-inducing drugs—including the ‘morning-after pill’—violates their religious beliefs.” (ACLJ; October 2012)

11. Sharpe Holdings, Inc.

Summary: A Missouri corporation that is involved in the farming, dairy, creamery, and cheese-making industries and employs at least 100 people.

Charles N. Sharpe.

Status: The district court granted a temporary restraining order that’s in effect until the court rules on further injunctive relief.

Founder and CEO: Charles N. Sharpe

Sharpe has likened Plan B and IUDs to abortion. “Rather, the focus of their claims for injunctive relief is the ability of these devices to prevent a fertilized egg from implanting in the wall of the uterus, thereby leading to the ejection of the fertilized egg from the woman’s body, in other words, the abortion of the live fetus.” (Court files; December 2012)

Sharpe believes that Plan B and IUDs are “abortion on demand.” “In accordance with their sincerely held religious beliefs and practices, the individual plaintiffs oppose the use, funding, provision, or support of abortion on demand and believe that the use of Plan B, Ella, and copper IUDs constitutes abortion on demand.” (Court files; December 2012)

12. Annex Medical, Inc.

Summary: Plaintiffs Stuart Lind and Thomas Janas are Minnesota business owners, the former of whom owns and operates Annex Medical and Sacred Heart Medical, companies that design, manufacture, and sell medical devices and employ 16 full-time and two part-time workers. Janas is an entrepreneur who has owned several dairy businesses in the past and intends to purchase another in 2013. He currently operates Habile Holdings and Venture North Properties, companies that lease commercial properties but currently have no employees.

Status: The district court denied preliminary injunction, but the plaintiffs appealed to the Eighth Circuit in January and got an injunction pending appeal, relying on the O’Brien order.

Owners: Stuart Lind and Thomas Janas

Lind and Janas believe insurance plans covering contraception are “sinful” and “immoral.” “Lind and Janas believe that paying for a group health insurance plan that complies with Defendants’ Mandate is sinful and immoral because it requires them and/or the businesses they control to pay for contraception, sterilization, abortifacient drugs and related education and counseling in violation of their sincere and deeply-held religious beliefs and the teachings of the Catholic Church.” (Court files; November 2012)

Lind and Janas believe that any action intended to prevent procreation is forbidden, whether before, during, or after intercourse. “Plaintiffs Stuart Lind and Tom Janas are devout Catholics who are steadfastly committed to biblical principles and the teachings of the Catholic Church, including the belief that life involves the creative action of God, and is therefore sacred. Lind and Janas therefore believe that any action which either before, at the moment of, or after sexual intercourse, is specifically intended to prevent procreation is an evil forbidden by God.” (Court files; November 2012)

Lind and Janas have likened Plan B to abortion. “Among the products the Mandate requires Plaintiffs’ group plans to fund are Plan B (the ‘morning after pill’) and Ella (the ‘week after pill’), drugs that are designed to destroy early human life shortly after conception.” (Court files; November 2012)

13. Korte & Luitjohan Contractors, Inc.

Summary: An Illinois-based full-service construction contractor that employs about 90 workers. The Kortes “are adherents of the Catholic faith” and “wish to conduct business in a manner that does not violate their religious faith,” according to the suit.

Status: The district court denied preliminary injunction, but the plaintiffs appealed to the Seventh Circuit, which issued an order granting the emergency motion for an injunction pending appeal over the strong dissent of one judge.

Cyril “Pete” Korte.

Owners: Cyril “Pete” Korte and Jane Korte

President: Cyril “Pete” Korte

Secretary: Jane Korte

The majority of the company’s employees choose to take coverage from their unions, rather than the company. “They employ about 90 full-time employees, about 70 of whom belong to and receive health insurance coverage from unions. The other 20 non-union employees receive coverage under a group plan provided by the Kortes’ company, according to their complaint.” (Madison-St. Clair Record; October 2012)

The Kortes take issue with Plan B, likening it to abortion. “Complying with the mandate would require the Kortes to violate their religious beliefs because it requires them to pay for, provide or otherwise support contraception, sterilization and abortion, the suit states, specifically noting the ‘morning-after pill.’” (Madison-St. Clair Record; October 2012)

14. Triune Health Group

Summary: A secular Illinois corporation that specializes in facilitating the re-entry of injured workers into the workforce. The health group employs 95 people.

Status: The district court granted a preliminary injunction.

Christopher and Mary Anne Yep.

Founders: Christopher and Mary Anne Yep

The Yeps have likened Plan B to abortion. “The Yeps embrace a belief which is embedded in Triune’s mission statement that each individual be ‘treated with the human dignity and respect that God intended.’ They say the Obamacare contraceptive mandate, administered by HHS and the other federal agencies named in the lawsuit, as well as the Illinois insurance contraceptive mandate, administered by Illinois’ Department of Insurance, require the Triune to provide and pay for abortion-related and contraceptive coverage for its employees and their families.” (Life News; January 2013)

The Yeps have said that the contraceptive mandate imposes a “gravely oppressive burden” on their religious beliefs. “‘The federal and state governments are coercing our clients to violate their conscientious convictions in a fashion that is completely at odds with the resounding declarations of our Founding Fathers and our modern Supreme Court jurisprudence,’ said Samuel B. Casey, Managing Director and General Counsel for the Jubilee Campaign’s Law of Life Project.” (Life News; January 2013)

Ironically, Triune Health Group was recently awarded “Best Workplace for Women” by Crain’s Chicago Business. “In Crain’s survey, Triune employees said it’s not the company’s written policies or benefits that stand out—in fact, some even expressed a desire for more than three weeks’ vacation. But workers seemed to value the flexible approach that management takes with each employee’s needs. For years, the company has posted a 95 percent employee retention rate. Most employees work out of their homes and are given flex-time, part-time and telecommuting options.” (Crain’s Chicago Business; May 2012)

15. Grote Industries

Summary: An Indiana-based privately held manufacturer of vehicle safety systems. The family-owned company has 1,448 full-time employees. The Grote family is Roman Catholic.

William “Bill” Grote.

Status: The district court denied a preliminary injunction. Plaintiffs appealed to the Seventh Circuit, which consolidated the case with Korte (#8) and granted Grote Industries a temporary injunction pending appeal, over the strong dissent of one judge.

Owner: William “Bill” Grote

Before the ACA, Grote Industries did not offer contraception in its company health insurance plan, citing the family’s Catholic beliefs. “The [Grotes] are Catholic and claim to operate their business according to the ‘precepts of their faith.’ This includes adhering to the Catholic Church’s teachings regarding ‘the moral wrongfulness of abortifacient drugs, contraception, and sterilization’ and denying their employees contraception coverage in the company’s plan.” (RH Reality Check; February 2013)

16. Weingartz Supply Company

Summary: A secular Michigan company that sells outdoor power equipment and employees 170 people. Owner Daniel Weingartz is Roman Catholic.

Daniel Weingartz.

Status: The district court granted a preliminary injunction for plaintiff Daniel Weingartz and Weingartz Supply Company, but not Legatus, a non-profit organization comprising more than 4,000 Catholic business owners and organizations that also got involved with the case. Defendants appealed to the Sixth Circuit in January. The government has filed a cross-appeal.

President: Daniel Weingartz

Weingartz has deliberately excluded contraceptive coverage in his company’s health-care plan. “Mr. Weingartz, a Roman Catholic, said he had devised a health plan that, in keeping with his religious beliefs, excluded coverage of contraceptives.” (New York Times; November 2012)

17. Infrastructure Alternatives, Inc.

Dredging.

Summary: A Michigan contractor in the fields of environmental dredging, contaminated sediment remediation, geotextile tube installation, and water treatment operations.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) recently responded to the concerns of some religious groups and individuals by proposing yet another plan to provide prescription birth control insurance coverage under the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Although this HHS initiative respects religious concerns and ensures access to birth control, it received a negative response from the Catholic Bishops, just as the other initiatives had. New York’s Cardinal Timothy Dolan, who is president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, explained the rejection, saying, “In obedience to our Judeo-Christian heritage, we have consistently taught our people to live their lives during the week to reflect the same beliefs they proclaim on the Sabbath.”

Now, it would be reasonable to come away from these words thinking that all Jews and Christians are of one mind about birth control—that is to say, opposed. On the contrary, many U.S. rabbis and ministers have long recognized the moral wisdom of ensuring wide availability of safe and effective birth control. Beginning in the late 1920s and the ’30s, many Jewish and Protestant groups formally endorsed access, including rabbis from Reform and Conservative Judaism, and ministers from Episcopal, Baptist, Congregational, Methodist, and Presbyterian churches. Clergy came forward with the support of their faith teachings, underscored by their real-life experience. The pastors were invited into the daily and private lives of congregants to witness, first-hand, that the ability to control one’s child-bearing makes for healthier children and mothers and for stronger families and communities. Today, one thing is certain: Differences in religious teachings remain, and no religious group or leader speaks for all of the nation’s faithful about birth control insurance coverage under ACA.

The recent HHS announcement affects employees of religiously-affiliated hospitals and the like; churches, synagogues, and mosques remain exempt. The reality is that these hospitals are not the same as houses of worship that conduct weddings or confirmations. They are not-for-profit businesses serving the larger public with secular services that are not specifically religious, like setting a broken ankle or performing an appendectomy. What’s more, a hospital employs staff from all walks of life, including faithful individuals in our communities whose fully informed moral decision may lead to a conclusion that differs from the faith of an employer. Besides, these workers earn their insurance along with wages and pension. The insurance belongs to the worker; an employer’s religious objection is irrelevant. A woman’s private decision about her birth control has a higher moral standing than her employer’s problem with her using it. And all we are talking about is insurance paperwork passing quietly through a human resources office—no one is being asked to use birth control.

Notably, the ACA’s birth control insurance provisions resemble those of New York state and California. These insurance requirements, tested in the highest courts of those states, were upheld as an equitable accommodation. And, as clergy, we emphasize that imposing a religious teaching about birth control into the private, personal home life of an American is an egregious violation of church-state separation. But all this is not enough to satisfy birth control opponents.

Arthur A. Cohen’s book, The Myth of the Judeo-Christian Tradition, encouraged a robust dialogue on our religious difference. He argues that the term “Judeo-Christian tradition” represents “a myth which buries under the fine silt of rhetoric the authentic, meaningful, and irrevocable distinction which exists between Jewish belief and Christian belief.” So let’s take Cohen’s advice and recognize that no one religious body or leader represents all Jewish belief—or Christian belief, for that matter. Where religions disagree, policymakers must not play umpire and pick their favorite “team.” Instead, they need to respect the boundary of church-state separation, leave it to the woman to decide about her health care, and ensure her access to the safe and legal preventive medicine she decides she needs.

Cohen calls our religious differences “meaningful.” So let’s ditch the rhetoric, embrace the wonder, grace, and strength of spiritual diversity, and enter a full-hearted and “meaningful” conversation across denominational lines and within religious groups about pressing issues, such as addressing the needs of the poor, the homeless, and immigrants. And let’s take the moral high ground by recognizing that women own their health insurance and deserve protection from the religious objections of others.

It is now clear that no “compromise” short of freeing all health plans from any regulation whatsoever having to do with contraception will placate fundamentalist Catholic groups. But with the Notre Dame appeal also comes evidence that the costs of these suits to Catholic universities is rising.

On Friday, Notre Dame filed a notice of appeal in its lawsuit challenging the contraceptive coverage rule. So, game on. It was not exactly a surprise when the bishops rejected the Obama administration’s latest overture to religiously-affiliated institutions. And it is now clear that no “compromise” short of freeing all health plans from any regulation whatsoever having to do with contraception will suffice. I didn’t expect all of these lawsuits to go away, but I was hoping, perhaps naively, that Notre Dame might accept the court’s dismissal of its lawsuit given the vocal disagreement with the legal and theological claims therein that has come from students and faculty at Notre Dame. (See here, here, here, and here. A dissent here.)

The lower court dismissed Notre Dame’s lawsuit for lack of standing and ripeness because Notre Dame is not currently required to provide contraception, having taken advantage of the one-year safe harbor period the Obama administration provided while the rule’s accommodation for objecting religiously-affiliated institutions is amended. All but one of the courts to consider the issue have essentially said that no final rule means nothing to sue about. These cases are pre-mature. (Like I been sayin’!) The Obama administration released a new proposed rule on January 30th, but the rule still isn’t final yet. Still, the closer we get to implementation of whatever the final rule is, the stronger the plaintiffs’ arguments become that it is time to reach the merits in these cases. (Though I believe Notre Dame lacks standing for other reasons that the government hasn’t argued.)

So why did I think Notre Dame might accept the court’s decision? My general theory is that the administrators of these plaintiff universities would like to do what is in the best interest of their students and employees and understand that going out of their way to provide a substandard, discriminatory health plan is not the best route to doing so. But the administrators of these institutions are under significant pressure from bishops, donors, and other off-campus orthodoxy-enforcing bullies like the Cardinal Newman Society. The promoters of the litigation campaign against contraceptive coverage likely saw Notre Dame as the crown jewel of plaintiffs, given its place in the American Catholic imagination. Plus, there are few big name schools that could be plaintiffs since so many of them currently have health plans with contraceptive coverage: at least for employees that is, who have more legal protections and bargaining power than students. (I’m looking at you, Georgetown.)

Still in hot water over inviting President Obama to speak at Notre Dame, I doubt University President Rev. John Jenkins had much choice about the lawsuit. Once the suit was dismissed, I thought the Notre Dame administration, having done its part for the bishops’ campaign, might turn its energies to more pressingconcerns. Or, if it wants to make sure its health plans are consistent with Catholic concern for access to healthcare, it could fix the inadequate maternity coverage in the student plan. Instead, it is doubling down on claims about contraception that are inconsistent with the legal and theological understandings of the majority of the Notre Dame professors and students who have weighed in on the issue.

This is especially unfortunate given the important role Notre Dame played in the development of Catholic thought on contraception historically. Adding to the history of Notre Dame faculty members’ advocacy for contraceptive access I recounted previously, Kathryn Pogin pointed me to the voice of Notre Dame students in the debate within Catholicism in the sixties. For example, in a 1965 letter (page six here), a Notre Dame student argued for a change in the Vatican’s position and noted Dr. John Rock, a devout Catholic who was integral to the development of modern contraceptives, had lectured on Notre Dame’s campus the year prior.

Since that time, the number of Catholics who accept the Church’s teaching on contraception has dwindled to almost nothing. Even those who do accept it must make a further leap to accept the claim that the Catholic ban on birth control translates to the impermissibility of compensating employees of varying beliefs with a normal health plan, or even allowing employees access to separate coverage provided by third-party plan administrators per the new rule proposal. In the case of students, they must accept the claim that Notre Dame has a sincere religious belief that requires interference in a money-for-health-insurance transaction between the student and a third-party insurer that involves no university funds at all.

I believe these lawsuits are bad for Catholic education. How bad, only time will tell. Multiple professors at Catholic-affiliated schools have told me they don’t want their kid going to their own universities now that their student health policies have come to light. I’ve tried, with mixed success, to convince concerned students admitted to Fordham Law that the University’s health center policies are not reflective of the Fordham experience, we are working on the problem, and they should come here anyway. More generally, the uncritical acceptance of the idea, by the media and even the Obama administration, that Catholic-affiliated institutions are conservative places where women should have expected discrimination in their healthcare benefits (and who knows what else) is making prospective students and employees rightly wary.

These cases have further implications for our academic reputations. Notre Dame claims to have a sincere religious beliefs that Plan B and Ella are abortifacients, when in fact science has proven otherwise. Are Notre Dame biologists expected to accept the authority of the bishops as to how a drug works? In what other disciplines should we expect Catholic doctrine to trump the knowledge of academics?

These lawsuits are a warning not to accept the assurances of recruiters that any given Catholic-affiliated school is a welcoming place for scholars of all faiths, genders, orientations, or academic persuasions. They undermine the idea that Catholic-institutions are home to research and education equal to that of secular schools, painting them as places one should expect to be controlled and indoctrinated. And sadly, these lawsuits must be viewed in the context of an ongoing crackdown on Catholic nuns, scholars and scholar-nuns.

I’ve been to more Catholic school than most priests. (I stole that line from a Notre Dame grad, but I’ve been to more than him.) I am extremely grateful for my education and experience, but the claims of Notre Dame and other plaintiff schools cause me to question whether I can continue to recommend it to anyone else.

**If you are an employee or student of a Catholic affiliated institution of any kind and would like information about potentially signing onto a comment to the proposed Health and Human Services rule, an amicus brief in one of the lawsuits challenging the rule, or other cross-campus organizing and advocacy, please send me your contact information via this link.

I was ten years old when the Supreme Court recognized that married women had a right to contraception. I was 18 years old when Roe v. Wade was decided. It is inconceivable (pun somewhat intended) that 40 years later, it’s still necessary to advocate for women’s rights to basic family planning services, even after I’ve reached an age where I no longer personally need them.

You probably know that last Friday, the Obama administration released proposed regulations on contraceptive coverage in the Affordable Care Act, having taken nearly a year to develop them after their initial announcement. As one observer said to me with a smile, “if it’s February, it must be contraception.” The proposed regulations, as Sally Steenland of the Center for American Progress wrote, allow religiously affiliated institutions as defined by the Internal Revenue Code to opt out of the contraception requirement while assuring coverage for women “strengthens religious liberty while safeguarding women’s health.”

Yet, those who oppose birth control access for women continue to hide behind false cries of religious freedom and religious liberty in their efforts to deny women coverage to basic preventive health care services. According to the Center for American Progress, more than 40 lawsuits “have been filed in the past year against the administration on behalf of religiously affiliated institutions that object to the contraception requirement.” When the Obama administration released the proposed regulations, it was widely reported that religions institutions opposed it. However, Roman Catholic leaders who oppose the coverage of contraceptive services were the only religious voices quoted in many prominent articles like this one from the New York Times.

The vast majority of religious leaders—indeed the vast majority of people of faith—who support contraceptive access were not included. More than a dozen major religious denominations have policies that support contraception. Nine in ten Americans say that birth control is morally acceptable, including 82 percent of U.S. Catholics. The vast majority of women of faith at risk of unintended pregnancies—including Catholic, Jewish, Mainline and evangelical Protestant women—use contraception. These numbers affirm that a broad majority of people of faith in the United States support access to contraception, despite the protests of Roman Catholic leaders who have fought the coverage of birth control during the past year with threats and lawsuits.

Religious freedom and religious liberty are only protected when laws do not privilege the teachings of one religion over another, and when every person has the moral right and responsibility to make his or her own decisions about procreation, including family size and spacing of children. Religious freedom means that each woman must have the right to accept or reject the principles of her own faith, without restrictions. No single religious voice can claim to speak for all religious people in this debate, and the public media should make sure that all religious voices are included in its coverage.

Today, more than 1,000 religious leaders from across the theological spectrum have joined together to support safe, affordable, accessible, and comprehensive family planning services by endorsing the new Open Letter to Religious Leaders on Family Planning. This statement affirms that all women must have equal access to contraception, and notes that “there are religious foundations for affirming safe, affordable, accessible, and comprehensive family planning services.”

These one thousand plus leaders come from 45 states and more than 35 religious traditions, including each of the major mainline Protestant and Jewish denominations, plus Southern Baptist, Roman Catholic, and Muslim traditions. They include current and former presidents of national denominations, seminary presidents, seminary faculty, leading theologians, and the heads of more than twenty national religious organizations.

These leaders have endorsed a statement that calls for all people to have equal access to contraception and advocates for increased U.S. financial support for domestic and global family planning. They affirm that the government has an obligation to ensure access to family planning services and supplies, and state that “the denial of family planning services effectively translates into coercive childbearing.”

Unlike those who are seeking to deny women contraception in the name of religion, we know that religious leaders and people of faith have supported modern methods of contraception since the early 20th century, and that they continue to do so today. We share an obligation to resist any attempts, political or religious, to restrict or deny access to family planning services. Over 1,000 religious leaders agree, and more are speaking out every day. They know that contraception saves lives, promotes human flourishing, and advances the common good.

Religious institutions have made it clear that they will not get on board with the birth control benefit in Obamacare no matter what, going so far as to flood federal courts with legal challenges that claim the benefit is unconstitutional. Despite that very clear message from the right, the Obama administration announced an amendment to the rules governing that benefit as a way to try and further accommodate concerns that providing insurance coverage for contraception and related reproductive health care services violates institutional religious rights. Now that the proposed additional accommodation has been released, what, if any, impact will this proposed change have on the over forty lawsuits that currently seek to block the benefit?

The answer: likely little.

When the birth control benefit was first created, the Obama administration exempted from compliance churches, synagogues, mosques and other institutions of worship whose sole function was to serve those who share their religious beliefs. Non-profit religiously affiliated institutions and for-profit businesses were not exempted. In response, representatives of literally every category of employer or organization affected by the accommodation sued, each claiming the benefit violated their rights and that the accommodation and safe harbor provision were insufficient. This proposed additional accommodation is a result of the administration trying to divert away at least a portion of those lawsuits, specifically those filed by non-profit religious hospitals, colleges and charities. These challenges appeared to concern the Obama administration the most, a reality it all but admits in its defense of those specific challenges.

In defending those suits the administration promised it would meet and try to work out a solution to those concerns. As a result of those assurances, many of those lawsuits have been dismissed or “paused” while the administration works out, presumably with these religiously-affiliated organizations, what this new accommodation will be. Last week’s announcement is the first step in that direction.

Under an order issued by the D.C. Circuit Court, Obama administration officials have a duty to report, beginning next month, on how they are coming along in working out that final version of the accommodation. If the concerns of the religiously-affiliated institutions are taken at face value, than these categories of challenges should be dismissed as the exemption now swallows more of those organizations, but, at first blush, does so without compromising coverage for the employees and students at religiously-affiliated organizations.

Under the proposed rules, female employees of hospitals and charities and female employees and students of colleges qualifying for the exemption will have their own individual insurance policies guaranteeing no-fee access to all forms of birth control, pregnancy screening, and other “preventive” reproductive health services mandated for coverage under Obamacare. This should alleviate the administrative concerns for those organizations that contract out its coverage. But one of the areas of conflict surrounding the logistics of coverage involves those institutions with self-insured plans, and on this point the proposed change should also satisfy any purported concern about compliance. Here’s how it should work. If an employer has its own self-insured plan, the new rules provide for a separate insurance company to handle the coverage much like traditional employer-provided but not funded health plans, meaning those who claim a religious objection to providing coverage via a self-insured plan no longer have to worry about the self-insured plan providing that coverage.

If the legal challenges by the non-profit organizations were grounded solely in legal disputes as opposed to political ones, then the administration’s proposed expanded accommodation should result in dismissal of a vast majority of those challenges since most, if not all, of those organizations should now qualify for the exemption. But, even if the new rules announced manage to quell the lawsuits by the non-profit organizations, they do not address in any way the challenges by profit-making companies owned by religious individuals or families. These are different legal challenges filed by for-profit businesses like Hobby Lobby and others whose whose owners object for religious reasons to birth control methods or medications. There is nothing short of repealing Obamacare in its entirety that would stem the political/legal challenges from this group of plaintiffs.

And it is this category of challenges to the mandate, those filed by for-profit businesses that appears most likely to reach the Supreme Court, likely during the term that starts next October. As more than one federal court judge has noted, the argument that these businesses have religious rights that are infringed by providing contraceptive benefits goes against nearly every precept of corporate entity law that establishes clear distinctions between individual personhood and an owner’s identity and corporate personhood and identity. The question that has equality advocates concerned is whether the Roberts Court will be willing to overlook centuries of corporate entity law in favor of expanding its corporate constitutional rights legacy beyond the damage of Citizens United.

On Friday the Obama administration announced its proposed revised rule governing the contraception mandate, but there’s no reason to think the political opposition to the mandate will change anytime soon. Just last week Michigan’s attorney general Bill Schuette filed a brief in support of Domino’s Pizza founder Tom Monaghan’s challenge to the mandate and the argument generally that the private, for-profit sector has religious rights in conflict to the mandate.

Meanwhile a federal judge in Missouri dismissed a challenge to the mandate by the Archdiocese of St. Louis on the grounds that they had rushed into court too early and needed to wait until any changes to the law are finalized.

In Mississippi the fate of the clinic’s sole abortion clinic hangs in the balance with the parties submitting final briefing to the court over whether the state’s TRAP law that is forcing the closure is unconstitutional and should be permanently blocked. Instead of arguing that closing the clinic would not create any significant hardship for the women of Mississippi, the state admits it in fact it will, but claims its forced closure of the clinic is really the fault of providers and patients.

Texas is close behind Mississippi in making access to reproductive health care all but impossible to get and now documents released to RH Reality Check show that the Texas Department of State Health Services ignored public input asking it to reconsider or revise new abortion reporting requirements at the direction of one anti-choice lawmaker and a handful of his colleagues.

Meanwhile Republicans in the state have suggested subsidizing businesses that ignore federal law and refuse to comply with the birth control benefit in Obamacare. The “Hobby Lobby” bill would essentially grant those businesses a exemption under Texas tax law that would match financial penalties imposed as a result of not complying with the mandate up to the total in taxes that business owes to Texas. The law appears fraught with constitutional problems, but as we’ve seen, that’s never stopped politicians on the right from passing bills anyways.

And just like conservatives will push obviously unconstitutional bills in the name of the Constitution, as Sheila Bapat notes, some of the most vociferous opponents to abortion rights and access are also opposed to economic policies that can help struggling families, like paid family leave. A fitting observation as we also celebrate the Family Medical Leave Act turning 20 this week.